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Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Kinabalu, Malaysia

An interesting Malaysian card...a bit different from what i already have from there....

The card shows a climber on summit plateau of Mt. Kinabalu (13.000 ft)...i know its a shame, but im totally hopeless at calculus and stuff so i cant really transfer feet into metres, miles into kilometres...galons into litres and so on and so on...i have a whole list of those metric systems, since i need it for work...but i never learnt it by heart....
I think that mountain climbing is really amazing and thrilling but as well dangerous...while looking at this man on the picture, i wonder, how much does all his equipment weigh...more than himself maybe? Isnt it a hard task to actually be able to climb up a mountain, carrying ALL that load on you? Doesnt all that weight actually cause difficulties, makes you lose balance?
There is a lesson we do at work every year with the upper-intermediate students...its called "I will survive" and it actually deals with climbers...the first story is about Joe and Simon, who were climbing a mountain, with a rope between them...then Simon accidentaly lowers Joe over a cliff and Joe's whole weight goes over Simon...and there comes the moral issue...should Simon cut the rope and let Joe die...or should he try and rescue him, with a great chance for both of them to die........he decides to cut the rope....what would YOU do if you had been Simon?
then the second part is about Captain Robert Scott and his men who wanted to reach the South Pole...the Norwegian explorer Amundsen was also trying to reach there first....this is a story which always gives me the goose bumps when we do it in class...its sad, and just makes you think about life in general...
In case you are intersted, you can read more about their lives and their expeditions here: Scott - Amundsen